Preaching and Paganism

Preaching and Paganism, by
Albert Parker Fitch

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Title: Preaching and Paganism
Author: Albert Parker Fitch
Release Date: June 16, 2005 [EBook #16076]
Language: English
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PREACHING AND PAGANISM
BY

ALBERT PARKER FITCH
PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN AMHERST
COLLEGE
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE COLLEGE COURSE AND THE PREPARATION FOR LIFE
CAN THE CHURCH SURVIVE IN THE CHANGING ORDER?
PUBLISHED ON THE FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED IN
MEMORY OF JAMES WESLEY COOPER OF THE CLASS OF
1865, YALE COLLEGE
THE FORTY-SIXTH SERIES OF THE LYMAN BEECHER
LECTURESHIP ON PREACHING IN YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXX
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
FIRST PUBLISHED, 1920

THE JAMES WESLEY COOPER MEMORIAL PUBLICATION
FUND
The present volume is the fourth work published by the Yale
University Press on the James Wesley Cooper Memorial Publication
Fund. This Foundation was established March 30, 1918, by a gift to
Yale University from Mrs. Ellen H. Cooper in memory of her husband,
Rev. James Wesley Cooper, D.D., who died in New York City, March
16, 1916. Dr. Cooper was a member of the Class of 1865, Yale College,
and for twenty-five years pastor of the South Congregational Church of
New Britain, Connecticut. For thirty years he was a corporate member
of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and
from 1885 until the time of his death was a Fellow of Yale University,

serving on the Corporation as one of the Successors of the Original
Trustees.

TO MY WIFE

PREFACE
The chief, perhaps the only, commendation of these chapters is that
they pretend to no final solution of the problem which they discuss.
How to assert the eternal and objective reality of that Presence, the
consciousness of Whom is alike the beginning and the end, the motive
and the reward, of the religious experience, is not altogether clear in an
age that, for over two centuries, has more and more rejected the
transcendental ideas of the human understanding. Yet the consequences
of that rejection, in the increasing individualism of conduct which has
kept pace with the growing subjectivism of thought, are now
sufficiently apparent and the present plight of our civilization is already
leading its more characteristic members, the political scientists and the
economists, to reëxamine and reappraise the concepts upon which it is
founded. It is a similar attempt to scrutinize and evaluate the significant
aspects of the interdependent thought and conduct of our day from the
standpoint of religion which is here attempted. Its sole and modest
purpose is to endeavor to restore some neglected emphases, to recall to
spiritually minded men and women certain half-forgotten values in the
religious experience and to add such observations regarding them as
may, by good fortune, contribute something to that future reconciling
of the thought currents and value judgments of our day to these central
and precious facts of the religious life.
Many men and minds have contributed to these pages. Such sources of
suggestion and insight have been indicated wherever they could be
identified. In especial I must record my grateful sense of obligation to
Professor Irving Babbitt's Rousseau and Romanticism. The chapter on
Naturalism owes much to its brilliant and provocative discussions.

CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface 11
I. The Learner, the Doer and the Seer 15
II. The Children of Zion and the Sons of Greece 40
III. Eating, Drinking and Being Merry 72
IV. The Unmeasured Gulf 102
V. Grace, Knowledge, Virtue 131
VI. The Almighty and Everlasting God 157
VII. Worship as the Chief Approach to Transcendence 184
VIII. Worship and the Discipline of Doctrine 209
CHAPTER ONE
THE LEARNER, THE DOER AND THE SEER
The first difficulty which confronts the incumbent of the Lyman
Beecher Foundation, after he has accepted the appalling fact that he
must hitch his modest wagon, not merely to a star, but rather to an
entire constellation, is the delimitation of his subject. There are many
inquiries, none of them without significance, with which he might
appropriately concern himself. For not only is the profession of the
Christian ministry a many-sided one, but scales of value change and
emphases shift, within the calling itself, with our changing civilization.
The mediaeval world brought forth, out of its need, the robed and
mitered ecclesiastic; a more recent world, pursuant to